


In Which Steve Is Bisexual, Occasionally Angry, and in Love with Bucky Barnes

by sparkling_cider



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Homophobic Language, Humor, M/M, enjoy the ride
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-13
Updated: 2019-02-13
Packaged: 2019-10-27 17:59:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17771561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparkling_cider/pseuds/sparkling_cider
Summary: A slow-motion montage flashes through Steve’s mind: the way the agents following him had seemed so surprised when he’d made a routine of visiting Bucky’s grave (empty, he knows it’s empty but he needs something to mourn), Nick Fury’s awkward attempts to suggest that there are plenty of women who would love to go out with Captain America, the cartoons and comics and movies. No one knows he’s queer, then, despite the letters and sketchbooks. Which leaves Steve wondering: how?A few loosely connected scenes where Steve is gay, sad, and sometimes both.





	In Which Steve Is Bisexual, Occasionally Angry, and in Love with Bucky Barnes

**Author's Note:**

> At one point, a characters recalls calling another character a homophobic slur.

A few weeks after he’s fished out of the ice, Steve goes to a bookshop. It’s one of the few things that’s stayed the same, it seems, in the past [years], and there’s comfort to be had in the overflowing shelves. The covers and titles and authors have changed, but books are still just that, apparently—books. Steve breathes, for what he thinks must be the first time since ’42.

And then he sees the book. 

It’s a rather tasteful cover, for all that it’s painted in shades of red, white, and blue: the colors have been arranged in a way that looks, for lack of a better word, classy. Steve is distantly jealous when he thinks of his own uniform. Mostly, though, he’s horrified. He knows that people have written books about him; of course they have. He was a hero, a legend, a painted bear used to raise money for the men who did the actual fighting. He was—is—Captain America. Of course they’ve written books.

But. 

_At The Right Hand of the Cap_ is splashed across the title, and then, in smaller letters, _A Biography of the Greatest Friendship of the Greatest Generation_. Below that, even smaller: _The Life and Times of Sergeant James Barnes_.

Steve blinks, then blinks again. He’d read it right. “Friendship,” it says. But they’d said, the agents had said—

Half in a trance, Steve takes the few steps to reach the book and pulls it off the shelf. He spares a moment to check that his hands are clean before starting to flip through the pages. 

The inside cover brags of a “recent discovery of a complete collection of wartime letters between Steve Rogers and James Barnes.” It’d been written about a year before Steve had been found, then. 

He’s been told by various SHIELD agents about a previously unopened box of World War II documents that had come to light with Jim Morita’s death. This must be one of the historians who had actually cared at the time, publishing an academic treatise that they expected maybe a dozen people to ever read. The name on the cover is “Blake Crowley”; Steve imagines, for a moment, Crowley’s reaction when her painstakingly researched biography about a propaganda figure from seventy ago started flying off the shelf.

Or not so painstakingly researched. 

Because it definitely says “friendship” in the title, and as he thumbs through, words like “camaraderie” and “brotherhood” keep popping out at him. Which doesn’t make any sense, not if the Smithsonian had found as complete a collection of his and Bucky’s letters as they’re claiming. Steve keenly remembers the content of most of the exchanges between the two of them in the spring of 1941, and he’s fairly sure that the only person who could describe them as “brotherly” has got serious issues to work out. 

And yet. 

A slow-motion montage flashes through Steve’s mind: the way the agents following him had seemed so surprised when he’d made a routine of visiting Bucky’s grave (empty, he knows it’s empty but he needs something to mourn), Nick Fury’s awkward attempts to suggest that there are plenty of women who would love to go out with Captain America, the cartoons and comics and movies. No one knows he’s queer, then, despite the letters and sketchbooks. Which leaves Steve wondering: how?

He buys the book, then walks to a nearby cafe. Despite what appears to be the norm, Steve categorically refuses to use his cell phone while walking. It’s not just that it feels disrespectful to the people around him; he also can’t imagine navigating New York City sidewalks while using his phone at the same time.

At a table in the corner, Steve finally pulls out his phone and takes a deep breath. He’s been in 2012 for more than a month, and he still hasn’t quite gotten the hang of mobile devices. They’re so thin yet clumsy, almost as if they’re designed to break and to make you pay the company more money for a new one. That can’t possibly be true, though; clearly the public is smart enough to see when they’re being scammed, right? And clearly no corporation would ever take advantage of the unsuspecting masses. That would be unthinkable, unimaginable. 

Steve needs to focus.

He types “captain america bisexual” into the search engine, whose name he really should know, and presses enter. 

56000 results in .5 seconds. 

Which… that’s a big number. A very big number. But as Steve starts to scroll through the links, he realizes that it’s all speculation and discussion on various World War II history forums. None of the sources include the letters. And it’s not that Steve thinks so highly of himself, but he’s sure that there would be at least a single article in the trashiest of magazines announcing to the whole wide world that Captain America is a fairy, inside scoop right here subscribe now to read the whole story.

Painstakingly, he presses the search bar again and this time types “captain america bucky barnes letters”. Over a million results, and Steve reflects for a moment that he doesn’t think he’s ever going to get used to the wealth of information available today. 

There’s an article by TIME, as well as a few smaller media outlets, all of them about the priceless documents found and the way they shed light on not only Captain America but also the war. Included are a few quotes that Steve vaguely remembers either writing or reading, hastily constructed sentences about food and housing and “take care of Ruth now, will ya” and nothing at all of consequence. 

The frown that’s been forming on Steve’s face deepens. There’s something fishy going on here, even if he isn’t sure yet what it is. 

Steve turns his phone off, stows it safely in his pocket. He’s going to cut short his day off today; he has the feeling that he’s got a lot of research to do and emails to write. 

“...So imagine my surprise when I found the letters on an official government site, censored almost beyond recognition. I mean, sure, there’s stuff in them that I wouldn’t want a schoolboy accidentally finding when he’s working on his history project. But I would’ve expected some indication that the available records weren’t complete.”

The Steve on the screen laughs dryly. “See, I’d been told that the world was different now, which I guess it is on paper. But here I was, a month out of the ice and already finding out that someone had looked at the past and decided that it needed to be changed. That the truth didn’t fit into their vision of a perfect America.”

He swallows, a tiny movement that the Steve watching the video hopes no one else caught.

“That’s why I’m holding this press conference. My name is Steve Rogers, I’m bisexual, and I’m here to answer your questions.”

The room explodes into shouts, and Bucky presses the spacebar. He’s been leaning forward, eyes focused intently on the screen, and now he pushes himself back, farther into the sofa.

“I’ve seen it before,” he explains, casual in a way that screams tension. Something about his voice makes Steve close Twitter and turn fully to look at Bucky where he’s sitting on the couch next to him. 

“So why…” Steve says, stopping at the look on Bucky’s face.

“You lied,” Bucky says. Steve automatically takes stock: Bucky’s hands are clenched, but not into fists, and he looks more nervous than dangerous. “To the newspapers and he magazines and the—whoever else was there.”

“What do you mean?”

“When I watched it the first—few times, I didn’t. I thought I was remembering wrong. It—it happens.” 

Steve settles back on the couch and suppresses the urge to reach for Bucky’s hand. Instead, he just nods: it does, indeed, happen. 

“But you weren’t like you say you were, in the—later, you talk about. Don’t—shut up, Rogers, I know I don’t have to say this and you’re not forcing me into anything.” Steve snaps his mouth shut. “I want to, okay. Just—”

Bucky visibly bites the inside of his cheek. “When you said all that stuff. About how you were a—a poor, queer, confused kid and. And how much it would’ve helped you to know that people like Captain America can be gay too.” He takes a breath. “That was a lie, wasn’t it?”

Steve nods again, and Bucky relaxes slightly. 

“I was worried,” he says. “That I wasn’t remembering right.”

“Yeah.”

It’s clearly not what he’s been gearing up to, though, and Steve gives him a moment. He’s been doing that a lot, recently, giving Bucky moments; sometimes it feels like that’s all he’s done since Bucky broke into his apartment nearly half a year ago with the words “I’m not him” and a cherry pie that he’d made as a peace offering. 

It’s been a tough couple of months, but Steve wouldn’t trade them for the world. Not with Bucky sitting next to him on the couch, their legs almost but not quite touching. And if it’s not everything he wants, well, everything isn’t about Steve for once, and he’s going to keep it that way.

Bucky says, “And you said I was the person who made you believe that there wasn’t anything wrong with you, and that—that wasn’t true either.”

It’s not quite a question, but Steve says, “No, it isn’t” anyway. 

“You were the one who. You went to queer bars and meetings and you had all these… pamphlets, and I pretended it all wasn’t happening for years.”

Steve shrugs. “You are who you are. It’s—”

“Don’t say it’s fine.” A wild note has entered Bucky’s voice, and he turns to face Steve fully for the first time. “I called you a faggot the first time you kissed me and I never apologized for it. That’s not okay.”

Steve blinks, a little stunned. He hadn't thought Bucky remembered anything about their relationship, hadn’t even realized that Bucky knew he was bi until a few minutes ago. Bucky’s memory is muddled to say the least: he remembers Rebecca but not Ruth, their fifth grade teacher’s name but not the place where they went to school, his favorite brand of cigarettes but not how much he hated The Hobbit. Bucky forgetting that he and Steve used to have sex on occasion isn’t all that improbable, really. 

Bucky is watching him now, intent and anxious, and Steve collects his thoughts. 

You more than made up for it later, is how he would normally respond, with maybe a grin to try and ease the tension—what he would have done, that is, eighty or five years ago. But it’s not 1938 anymore, and the thing is Steve doesn’t particularly want it to be either. 

Instead, he catches Bucky’s gaze and holds it. “I’m not gonna lie,” he says. “That sucked. I tried not to care at the time, but it—sucked.”

Bucky says, “I’m sorry.”

“Apology accepted,” Steve says. There’s a beat, and then Bucky deflates. 

“Thank fuck that’s over,” Bucky says. He shifts away from Steve and turns his attention back to the computer on the table. “Now, I found this awesome video of—”

“Is it another baby otter?” Steve asks. Bucky continues to type in the YouTube search bar and very suspiciously doesn’t reply. “It’s another baby otter, isn’t it.”

“Baby otter videos are the peak of human civilization,” Bucky says solemnly. “Look, this one’s got a tiny rock.”

Which, holy shit, it turns out it does. It has a tiny fucking rock in its tiny fucking otter paws. Steve only wants to cry a little bit. 

“Wait til the next one,” Bucky says, only a little smug as he watches Steve’s face. “That one made a friend.”

 

“Hey,” Sam says. “Wasn’t there a whole thing a while ago where they found y’all’s letters from the war? And then it turned out that they censored them and then Steve came out on live TV?”

“Hmm?” Steve says, glancing up from his book reluctantly. Bucky and Natasha, engaged for the past few minutes in a violent struggle for the remote control, ignore them.

Sam waves his phone at Steve’s face. “There’s an article about how it’s the 8-year anniversary of that.”

“Has it really been eight years?” Steve asks vaguely. He wants to get back to his book; the life of President Van Buren may not be the most fascinating material, but Steve has a reading challenge on Goodreads to beat Bucky at, and he refuses to lose like he has for the past two years in a row.

“Yeah, and I just realized, I don’t think I ever found out what was in those letters for real.”

That gets Steve to stop thinking about his book.

“Oh, you probably don’t want to see that,” he says, half-sputtering and trying not to panic. “It’s not very interesting, just—uh, stuff about the war, and, um—”

“What doesn’t Steve want us to see?” Natasha asks, seizing the remote from Bucky and shoving it down her shirt for safekeeping. 

“It doesn’t matter!”

“Those letters they found a few years ago,” Sam says, raising an eyebrow at Steve. “There was a huge news blowup about it, remember?”

“Sure,” Natasha says. She is then tackled by Bucky, who reaches into her shirt to fish out the remove control. “Hey!”

“I’m gay, it’s fine,” Bucky says, a little breathlessly because she’s got him in a choke hold. “What were you saying about the letters?”

“Just wondering whether they ever released the unedited versions.”

“I don’t see why we’re still talking about this,” Steve tries. “Bucky and Natasha are going to kill each other and break the coffee table. Why aren’t we talking about that?”

“We’re fine,” Bucky says. He looks decidedly not-fine; Steve is pretty sure he should have passed out by now, judging by how blue his face is. 

“We’re not going to break the table,” Natasha says. “We’re trained assassins, we don’t go around breaking coffee tables.” 

A second later, Bucky, who’s started gasping a little for breath, somehow manages to weaken Natasha’s hold on him enough to do a backflip that carries him out of harm’s way. He lands with a crash on the coffee table, which splinters into a million pieces. It leaves him lying on the floor, surrounded by innumerable bits of wood and struggling to catch his breath.

“So,” he says. “We broke the coffee table.”

“You broke the coffee table, you mean,” Natasha says. It’s only because Steve knows how to read Bucky’s narrowed eyes that he sees the twitch of Bucky’s left leg. In another moment, Natasha is tumbling to the floor on top of Bucky.

“We broke the coffee table.”

“Fuck you.”

Steve returns to his book. He’s lost the thread now, and he has to flip back a page and a half to find the beginning of the paragraph, which is a whole other level of frustrating. Why did no one teach this author how to press the enter key?

On the other side of the living room, Sam clears his throat and holds up his phone.

“Sam, really—”

“Bucky,” Sam reads. “I hope you’ve gotten my other letter by now. You know, the one with the neighborhood talk and how Becca’s baby is doing and when Mabel Hopkins told me she was sweet on me and I laughed because I thought she was kidding and she started crying.” He breaks off. “Did you actually?”

Natasha and Bucky have gone quiet and are lying fairly still now, listening. 

“Probably,” Steve says. “It sounds like something I would’ve done.”

Natasha says, “Would’ve done, past tense?” and Bucky snorts.

“But I’ve just talked to—well I won’t say his name for obvious reasons but I met him at the enlistment office—shut up—and then saw him down at the Slide, which, so we got to talking and when I told him about how there’s someone I—you know, care about—fighting but of course the censors mean we haven’t been able to say a lot of things he seemed to get it. So he said he’s got connections and that he’ll try to get this letter to you without going through the censors and then he tried to make a move on me which was pretty funny considering.

“I’ve thought about what I’d write to you if I got the chance to get by the censors and how nice it’d be to be able to write Bucky I love you instead of could you tell your sister I’m sweet on her, because don’t get me wrong our system is great but whoever is reading our letters must think we each have about a legion of sisters each, plus I think of Rebecca every time and I don’t particularly enjoy the association let me tell you that.” 

Sam breaks off to take a breath. “Jesus, Steve, were commas not invented in the 1940s?” he asks. “And what system were you talking about?”

It takes Steve a moment to realize that the last part is a question directed at him. 

“We had a code,” he says. Slowly, remembering. He hasn’t thought about this in years. “For when we wanted to say something that wouldn’t get past the censors. Well, not exactly a code,” he amends, “more like we’d pretend to pass messages along from dames. Like, Bucky’d say, ‘Tell Dot I miss her,’ and I would say ‘Could you remind Eve that I haven’t forgotten about her and would she please send longer letters.’”

He stops, realizing that it’s become suddenly very quiet.

“Well, that sucks,” Natasha finally says.

“It did,” Steve agrees.

“Is that what you didn’t want us to see?” Sam asks after a moment. “I don’t have to keep reading if it brings up painful memories.”

Steve has a moment of clarity. This could be very, very funny. It’s going to be mortifying, of course, but also very funny.

He says, “No, it’s—you should finish it, actually.” 

“Alright.”

“So when—there’s a scribbled-out word here—agreed to send the letter and after I politely said I’d love to suck his cock but maybe not today I went home and now I’m sitting here and there’s a lot I want to say to you but not all that much room so I guess I should get the obvious thing out of the way first. 

“So. I love you. But more importantly,” and Sam’s eyes widen all of a sudden and his mouth drops open and Steve thinks, ah.

“Keep going,” Natasha instructs, regal even from her position on the floor. “Why’d you stop?”

Sam’s face is a study in the mixture of disgust and morbid curiosity. He doesn’t respond, just keeps scrolling, expression growing more and more horrified as he does.

Steve puts the book on the couch beside him and leans closer to Sam. “What is it, Sam?” he asks. “I thought you wanted to read these letters? Is something the matter?”

“You—” Sam chokes out. He doesn’t meet Steve’s eyes.

“Yeah?” Steve asks.

“What the fuck is this.” He hasn’t stopped scrolling; his eyes dart back and forth across the screen like a car crash that he can’t quite look away from. 

“Let me see,” Natasha says, getting up. The whole motion is so smooth that Steve barely even realizes she’s moving until she peers over Sam’s shoulder to squint at his phone’s screen. She mouths the words, probably consciously because Natasha never does anything by accident, and Steve finds himself automatically lip-reading as she goes.

“...you’d know exactly what I want to do to you but I’d tell you anyway, you know how you like it when I talk while—”

Natasha looks up from the phone to stare at him incredulously. “What the fuck is this.”

Steve is not blushing. It is not his fault that one of Morita’s kids found his letters to his wartime sweetheart and decided, for some reason, to donate them to the Smithsonian rather than throwing them in a bonfire. It’s a little bit his fault that he made such a big deal about them, but that was less about the myth of Captain America and more about fighting the systematic erasure of LGBT history. It’s entirely Sam’s fault that he didn’t listen to Steve when Steve told him that he shouldn’t read the letters, though. Steve clings to that.

“I did warn you,” he says.

“You didn’t say sex,” Natasha says, still reading, seemingly caught halfway between horror and amusement. “You said, ‘you probably don’t want to see that’. You didn’t say, ‘you probably don’t want to see that because it’s actual erotica’.”

“I thought that was implied.”

“Why would it be implied?”

“It was definitely implied,” Bucky says. He still hasn’t moved from his earlier spot on the floor except to shift so that he could better see the expressions on Sam and Natasha’s faces.

“Thank you,” Steve says.

Sam says, eyes wide and haunted, “I used to play Captain America when I was a kid. I was Steve, and my brother and sister were Bucky Barnes and the Red Skull. I used to—”

He shudders, eyes closed in an apparent attempt to shield himself from the horror that is this cursed universe.

Steve breaks first, bursting into laughter.

“Is this funny to you?” Sam asks, comically offended. “You ruined my childhood, you monsters!”

“Your face—” Steve gasps. “When you—”

“You looked like—” Bucky adds from the floor, shoulders shaking. “You look like you’re gonna cry, Sam are you okay—”

“I’m traumatized!” Sam protests. “Stop—everyone stop laughing! Natasha, you were supposed to be on my side, don’t encourage them!”

“Sorry.” Natasha doesn’t look sorry at all. There are what appear to be tears in her eyes. “I just—you have to admit it’s funny.”

Clearly biting back a smile, Sam shakes his head solemnly. “This day will go down in history as the day when I found out that Captain America, my childhood icon, used to write sexts in letter form to my other childhood icon.”

That sets them off again.

“I am so sorry,” Steve finally manages to get out. “I am so sorry.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Sam says. “Keep talking.”

But he’s grinning as he says it.


End file.
